A reader sent me this and I thought he makes a number of great points!

“Conservative party Destroying the Quality of life” :

1.. Work until you drop pensions ..A pension that you were taxed for.

2.. Granny Tax: Taxing the thrifty who saved to provide for themselves in old age.

3..The public disapprove of same sex marriage..Groveling to minority’s in particularly the Muslim community, appointing a Muslim to the cabinet a person who was never voted into government by the public ..

4. 100 people chasing one job vacancy. Factory’s close, Destroying British jobs with EU red tape..His and hers pregnancy leave..Allowing a flood of imports from China Communist Dictatorship. Excessive council tax: Only a fool would open a factory now in Britain.

5.. Britain now a safe haven for terror: European human rights judges have blocked more than 900 attempts by Britain to deport foreign criminals and terror suspects in recent years.

6. Not holding the BBC to account for wasting the publics money, money paid with the threat of a prison sentence. .. Allowing the BBC to broadcast Left wing propaganda,

7..Government preach austerity while paying the EU £50 million a day and giving £12 billion in foreign aid. Mercedes dealers in Africa are rubbing their hands with glee.

8.. Cameron plans to destroy the House of Lords

9..Wasting time and ££££ on the Leveson Inquiry

10. Still to many none jobs in County Council Town Halls on salaries and gold plated pensions that would be unobtainable in the private sector

11. Allowing the public to have more say on local planing applications so that left wing and Green nuts can cause endless delay on approvals

Reactionary, racist, zenophobic, but above all, totally incoherent. The points are so pathetic and contradictory that they are not worth wasting time on, but number 11 must come close to a template definition of brain-dead reactionary rubbish.

Colonel Blimp has been chased out of his formerly middle-class area by 3rd-world colonisers and thoroughly deserves his fate. If he had organised some coherent political resistance to the internally-backed invasion of his country, he’d have a nice, peaceful retirement to look forward to. His grand-children will not inherit the land which was their birth-right but this should be celebrated because multi-culti is …. I’ve run out of cynicism because what I’ve written is so depressingly true.

Never mind – even though the country is being wrecked from within, we can be delighted at the routing of the evil BNP, the Establishment’s dead-end for those opposed to national ruin.

In my opinion, the eleven points which the reader sent you are (while worthy points for debate in and of themselves) merely eleven random symptoms of the disease, none of which really get to the root cause.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Who gets to vote for the board of directors at Tesco plc (or any other company)? Answer: the shareholders only. The actual stakeholders. Those who have already put their money where their mouths are, and thus, those who will necessarily vote to protect their capital.
Who gets to vote on who runs the country? Answer: any old fool who resides here, no investment necessary. Just step off the tarmac at Heathrow from Umbongo land, and hey presto, you’re a “British citizen” with a free vote.
Universal suffrage (ie, the right to vote, without any reciprocal responsibility) lies at the very core of the problem. Why? Because, once that “right” is established, all any savvy politician has to do is to promise all these voters that they’ll loot money from those who have actually earned it, and redistribute it to those that have not earned it. And having done that, all of the above symptoms will slowly start to materialise.

Peter –
1. Yes. It’s happening
2. Yes. as above
3. Yes.
4. It is factually correct, more or less.
5. Yes – it’s true as far as I’m aware
6. I don’t see why the BBC doesn’t simply go pay-to-view. Why should it cost more to switch on a TV than the TV does itself. However, it is just garbage on all channels so I’d be happy with the licence fee doubling/trebling to dissuade people from watching. I don’t pay the fee because I don’t watch TV.
7. Is it true? probably
8. I don’t care
9. As above
10. Yes – factually correct
11. No comment

3 The muslims are even more anti-gay marriage that the readers of the Daily Mail

4 Yes, the results of globalisation, enthusiastically endorsed by the free market gurus and mega corporations that support the Tories

5 Agreed

6 Yes, let’s give Murdoch all he wants and more. Bullshit, the BBC is a great British institution.

7 Agreed

8 LOL! Are we a democracy or not? Let’s put a simple reform proposal to a referendum. If it gets voted down, the people will have voted to continue with the present corrupt patronage system. I suspect that George III would be amazed to see that the House of Lords is not so different from the one he had to deal with in 1800.

9 A mega scandal involving political and police corruption – anyone who thinks this doesn’t matter is either a Murdoch groupie or couldn’t give a **** about standards in public life, so I say get stuffed.

10 Agreed

11 Yes, I’m sure you won’t care when they want to bulid a nuclear plant at the end of your garden.

“Who gets to vote for the board of directors at Tesco plc (or any other company)? Answer: the shareholders only. The actual stakeholders. Those who have already put their money where their mouths are, and thus, those who will necessarily vote to protect their capital.”

That analogy doesn’t hold water though, for two main reasons. Firstly it would only work if all Government and Parliament did was doll the out the money. If the only thing they did was tax and spend then you could have an argument. But that isn’t just what they do. They pass laws and I have as much as stake in those laws as you do, regardless of the amount of tax either of us pay.

The other reaons is related. It is the ability to ignore the decisions. I don’t have shares in Tesco thus I don’t get to make any of the decisions related to Tesco. But if Tesco makes a decision that I don’t agree with there is nothing to compel me to purchase anything from Tesco. I can simply ignore Tesco. If I don’t get a say in making the law of the land I don’t have choice to ignore it. I can’t decide I dislike that decision, I had no say in it, thus I’m not going to obey it.

No, we’re not – and that’s why I didn’t care because it makes no difference. I was asked about the points on the leader so I responded point by point. If I were asked to put 11 points which circumscribe my beliefs then those 11 points would be different to most (or even all) of those cited. So peter, when you put a question, make sure that it is the question you wish to put because I will answer it directly, unlike Phantom the evader.

2.. Granny Tax: Taxing the thrifty who saved to provide for themselves in old age.

The results of successive governments’ fixation with the concept of the State taking taxes from the working population and applying them almost indiscriminately to an ever growing list of recipients. To be fair this government has finally screwed up the courage to say what common sense has always known:
“If you keep on giving ever increasing amounts of national income to those who do not create wealth, then you will have less money to reinvest in wealth creation, because the extension of benefits will require an increase in bureaucratic tax funded jobs to administer those benefits.”

All the other points are mainly due to the loss of genuine democracy and debate in our nation. Government policy is more influenced by lobbyists and special interest groups than the people who actually PAY for those policies; you and me.

AS I said to Troll in another post, Great Britain was spent after WW2. Our politicians wanted to create a fairer society and the Welfare State was born. It has become a monster, weakening our creativity, economy and social cohesiveness.

On the other hand we had given up the Empire and we were looking for a new role in international affairs.
IMV we wrongly turned towards mainland Europe instead of forging a new trading bloc with our Commpnwealth

2.. Granny Tax: Taxing the thrifty who saved to provide for themselves in old age.

The results of successive governments’ fixation with the concept of the State taking taxes from the working population and applying them almost indiscriminately to an ever growing list of recipients. To be fair this government has finally screwed up the courage to say what common sense has always known:
“If you keep on giving ever increasing amounts of national income to those who do not create wealth, then you will have less money to reinvest in wealth creation, because the extension of benefits will require an increase in bureaucratic tax funded jobs to administer those benefits.”

All the other points are mainly due to the loss of genuine democracy and debate in our nation. Government policy is more influenced by lobbyists and special interest groups than the people who actually PAY for those policies; you and me.

AS I said to Troll in another post, Great Britain was spent after WW2. Our politicians wanted to create a fairer society and the Welfare State was born. It has become a monster, weakening our creativity, economy and social cohesiveness.

On the other hand we had given up the Empire and we were looking for a new role in international affairs.
IMV we wrongly turned towards mainland Europe, instead of forging a new trading bloc with our Commonwealth partners. If we had have done that we would have maintained a strong Merchant Navy and a strong Royal Navy. We would actually have shared in the vibrancy and talent of countries like Australia, India, Canada and some of the African nations.
Instead it seems we have fallen between two stools, and ended up as a kind of international “Billy No Mates.”

“The results of successive governments’ fixation with the concept of the State taking taxes from the working population and applying them almost indiscriminately to an ever growing list of recipients.”

In essence, that’s what elections and democracy are about: who group gets to plunder and who gets plundered. As the great Hans-Hermann Hoppe said:

“One-man-one-vote combined with ‘free entry’ into government — democracy — implies that every person and his personal property comes within reach of — and is up for grabs by — everyone else.”

The one flaw in Pete’s argument is that in a democracy there is nothing stopping the electorate from choosing political representatives who will do exactly as Pete wishes – minimise the state to the bare essentials and allow everyone to keep the maximum amount of their own personal property and earnings . There is no reason why ‘Ron Pauls’ cannot be elected everywhere, but if national electorates don’t want their states to be run that way it’s not the fault of the system but the fault of the libertarians to perusade their case succesfully.

Peter’s point three leap out of the page at me too when I read the list.

I also don’t get the problem about having people in the Lords that no one elected. Good! We need some experts in a wide range of pertinant things in there. Not convinced of her expertise though. Also if I remember aright, she came out with lots of officially sanctioned illogical Tory crap about AV.

I think the House of Lords should be made up of a 50/50 split. 50% would be appointed by professional merit. Individuals eminent in many fields, business, law, education, charity, trade, science, medicine etc, all appointed by an independent ‘Nobel’ style committee. The other 50% would be elected by local constituencies with one proviso – no party affilitiations. They would all have to be independent and sit indepedently in the House. There would be no Paty Political connections or association in the HOL. Thay way through a combination of genuine expertise and democratic accountability it could act as an honest reviewer or Commons legislation.

Firstly, it would have no greater democratic legitimacy. What would happen if the Commons back it, the majority of peers oppose it but in the Lords the majority of the elected peers back it then you would still have a system where those without democratic mandate passing laws.

Also the no party affiliation bit is unworkable. You would have the same situation as you had in the Irish Presidential Election where Seán Gallagher campaigned as an Independent but was, in all intents and purposes, a Fianna Fáil candidate.

I have the admit I am opposed to an elected House of Lords (I don’t think it would work). But I’m also opposed to an unelected House of Lords (it isn’t legitimate). Splitting the difference would simply create a system than neither works or is legitimate.

There is no perfect political system and cannot be in an imperfect world. There will always be flaws and caveats and unfairnesses in any system chosen. The answer is to try to minimise the collation of patronage and powerinto singularly controlled hands and I think a non-party HOL will help that.

You make it sound like party control in the Lords is that significant. It isn’t. There isn’t any sort of rigid party discipline. The whips can’t do anything to them. Whips normally have two parties over MPs. Firstly the nuclear option of deselection. That the MP would lose his job. Peers have a job for life and don’t have to retain the favour of a political party for it. The second is the prospect of promotion, something that is rare in the House of Lords and simply not an ambition for the majority of them.

I agree with Seamus’s points, and perhaps the answer is to abolish the House of Lords as unworkable?
Perhaps a better idea would be a council made up of groups such as e.g. Taxpayers Alliance, Citizens Advice Bureau and the Confederation of British Industry. They could have a number of delegates representing different aspects of their organisations.

The important bit to my mind is that they are a-political, representative and responsive to people and businesses. The heads of those organisations would change as they do anyway, but the goals of the organisations remain the same.
This would add another aspect of true representative democracy as a balance to political ideologies.

I don’t actually see the need for an upper chamber if reforms of the Commons and the Government’s pre-legislative actions are put in place. The problem with the current system is that Government is in too much of a rush to do something. An issue arises and the Government have published a Green Paper before you can even blink. The White Paper is published not long after and a bill is presented to the House with as almost a carbon copy of the White Paper. The result is that it is hurried, ill thought out and in need of significant, specialist amendment, the bulk of which is currently done in the Lords.

They need to slow the process down. When an issue arises that doesn’t necessarily need immediate emergency legislation the Government need to meet with the relevant experts and hammer out not just what it wants to do in principle but in detail. It then needs to send it pre-legislatively to the relevant House of Commons committee to consider. The committee can produce a report and send it back to the Government who then publish a White Paper and a bill. The result will be a bill in less need of amendment and thus will bypass much of what the Lords needs to do.

Historically there was. Normally a Bicameral system has been in place to identify differences in citizenship. From the extreme Tricameral Parliament in apartheid South Africa, where each race (except blacks) had their own chamber, to the more common federal Bicameral Parliaments, where a person has a representative as a citizen of the country (in Germany the Bundestag, America the House of Representatives) but also a representative as a citizen of their particular region (in Germany the Bundesrat, in America the Senate).

Historically in the UK it was to identify the two different types of citizens, the aristocracy and the lower classes.

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